I think I am making some progress in seeing what is going on with me.
I turned to alcohol, to shopping, to junk food, to video games and movies, because when I am alone with my thoughts, all the pain comes flooding back and I spend my time trying to actively avoid that.
A while back I wrote a blurb for the Autism Self Advocacy Network and I think it also has bearing on your issue, about the way some parents raise their children. I think the same issue also strongly relates to the way some people are abnormally and desperately lonely all the time and need to be constantly surrounded by people. It could be a discussion point with your therapist to see what they think.
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Self Advocacy.
The power to assert our own will on situations and the ability to speak up and be insistent about issues that concern us usually stems from being taught to be independent as a child. With many of us this happens through circumstance and necessity rather than parental intent but the result is the same.
Both my parents worked full time and we had to fend for ourselves a lot, we came home from school to an empty house and had to cook our own meals and clean up our own mess from age 5. My siblings and I all grew up with a very strong sense of self identity, proud of our own self sufficiency and fiercely defensive of our own independence.
Some children are not taught this but are instead taught to be very dependent on their parents. With autism the lessons we learn as small children become almost hard wired and they are the most difficult lessons to unlearn. Learning to be more assertive is going to be a very difficult thing to learn for some of you, it’s going to take a lot of hard work and practice to shake off what you were taught as a child.
You need to start small, start being more insistent on doing things your own way without help. This means you will make mistakes but making mistakes is the only way any of us ever learn anything, and as long as someone is hovering over you and preventing you from making mistakes you can not learn and grow.
Being successful at asserting your own will often requires good communication skills and these are also something you can only learn the hard way. By making mistakes and then pondering about how you can better handle the situation next time. Many people aren’t really able to speak up for themselves unless they get angry and this is not always the best way to get people to cooperate with you. Another difficult lesson to learn is how to not be ashamed of making mistakes but to instead treat them as lessons in life and grow from the experience.
It’s not going to be easy, it’s going to take genuine effort and it’s going to cause you stress, but learning to stand on your own two feet and to stick up for yourself is necessary, you won’t always have people you can depend on around you.
